Archive for the ‘Blue Ridge Parkway’ Category
Dark Hollow, Shenandoah National Park, VA
Posted by Chris | Filed under Blue Ridge Parkway, Shenandoah Valley, Trail Information
Description: Moderate hike with two waterfalls and tons of wildlife.
Total Distance: 5.5 miles round trip
Location/Directions: Luray, VA – Drive to Big Meadows, just south of Mile Post 51 on Skyline Drive. Turn in and follow signs to Amphitheater parking area. Trails begins behind the amphitheater.
Difficulty: Moderate
Elevation Gain: 1400 feet
Finding the Trailhead: Trail begins behind the amphitheater.
The Hike: Circuit passes Rose River Falls and the site of an old copper mine. Erosion has all but obliterated all traces of the mine. The circuit continues on past Dark Hollow Falls and offers view points from the Appalachian Trail as it circles the Big Meadows picnic and camping areas.
Yankee Horse Overlook Trail
Posted by Chris | Filed under Blue Ridge Parkway, Trail Information
Description: This is a quintessential Parkway leg-stretcher trail. Great views of Wigwam Falls combine with an interesting exhibit about the logging railroads that carried of the region’s virgin timber.
Total Distance: 0.1-0.2 mile
Location/Directions: Blue Ridge Parkway Milepost 34.4
Difficulty: Easy
Maps: No Parkway map available; USGS Montebello
Finding the Trailhead: Start on the right side of the overlook, by the interpretive sign.
The Hike: Blue Ridge Parkway interpretive trails give an amazing sense of how people affected the mountain environment. If you open yourself to the insights, you’ll start noticing the remains of old cabin sites and stone walls where you’d best expect them. This trail will change the way you look at trails wherever you hike in the eastern United States.
This trail explores a section by of railroad reconstructed on the actual grade used by the Irish Creek Railway to transport more than 100 million board feet of lumber. The railway was built in 1919 and 1920 and was 50 miles long.
Mountain Farm Trail
Posted by Chris | Filed under Blue Ridge Parkway, Trail Information
Description: An eye opening glimpse into the rustic lives led by nineteenth-century Appalachian mountaineers who lived near what is now the Parkway.
Total Distance: 0.5 miles
Location/Directions: Blue Ridge Parkway Milepost 5.8
Difficulty: Easy (wheelchair accessible)
Elevation Gain: Negligible
Maps: Parkway handout map, available at visitor center; USGC Sherando
Finding the Trail: Park at the visitor center and take the paved sidewalk south (left when facing the building.
The Hike: This nice and easy hike is highlighted by the seasonal programs and the costumed interpreters which give great insight into the lives of the Appalachian mountaineers. The 1890s farm found on the Mountain Farm Trail is not the original but was recreated in 1950 with building structures from the time period. The authentic setting is explored through the easy trail.
Pick up a copy of the trails interpretive map at the visitor center and take the paved sidewalk that becomes a gravel lane. On the left, you first reach a cabin and chicken house and then a “gear loft” where the family stored their supplies and equipment. Past the structures, and across the paved lave, a contorted barn is surrounded by a stone walled pigpen. Next, a springhouse channels cold water through a sheltered food storage structure. Beyond that is a gate, pass through and you are in “Coiner’s deadening’,” grass covered meadows under the towering crag of Humpback Rocks. Here mountaineers cleared fields the slow way - by girdling the trees to kill them and planting crops between the leafless giants. You can walk beyond the gate, gradually rising to the height of land in Humpback Gap, where the trailhead parking for Humpback Rocks Trail is located on the opposite side of the Parkway. Retrace your steps, or park at Humpback Rocks trailhead and take both trails from one central spot.
If you do hike the Humpback Rocks trail, short and steep, it lifts hikers to truly aw inspiring vistas that stretch north and south along the Blue Ridge, east to the Piedmont and west into the Shenandoah Valley. It is a 1.0-mile climb on a blue-blazed trail that has a partially gravel surface and resting benches along the way because it is strenuous.
Greenstone Self-Guiding Trail
Posted by Chris | Filed under Blue Ridge Parkway, State Parks, Trail Information
Description: The twenty-minute self-guiding loop trail will help you learn about the geology of the northern Blue Ridge and see how mountaineers used their most abundant resource - rock - to wrest a living from harsh surroundings.
Total Distance: 0.2 miles
Location/Directions: Blue Ridge Parkway Milepost 8.8
Difficulty: Easy
Maps: No parkway map available; USGS Sherando
The Hike: This engagingly educational self-guiding interpretive trail will simultaneously explain the natural setting and alerts you to the telltale signs of human habitation that are a stirring subtext to the Parkway experience.
Crabtree Falls
Posted by Chris | Filed under Blue Ridge Parkway, State Parks, Trail Information
Description: One of the South’s best waterfall walks also has barrier free access.
Total Distance: 6.0 mile round trip; the upper falls make a nice turnaround point for a 3.4 mile hike from the bottom trailhead or a 2.6 mile hike from the upper trailhead.
Location/Directions: Blue Ridge Parkway Milepost 27.2
Difficulty: Strenuous from the bottom of the falls, moderate from the top
Elevation Gain: 1,500 feet for the entire falls trail from the bottom; 1,000 feet to falls from the bottom; 500 feet to falls from the top
Maps: USGS Montebello and Massies Mill; Appalachian Trail Conference, Pedlar Ranger District, George Washington National Forest.
Finding the Trail: Exit the Parkway at Milepost 27.2 and descend east on VA 56 for 6.6 miles to the lower trailhead on the right side of the road. The lot was expanded in 2002, and a new rest room facility has been constructed. The fall’s upper trailhead is on VA 826, an unpaved road suitable for use in good weather by higher clearance vehicles. To reach that trailhead, go east on VA 56 from the Blue Ridge Parkway; in about 3.8 miles turn right on VA 826. The upper trailhead is on the left in just under 4 miles.
The Hike: The Crabtree Falls isn’t the last cataract you’ll encounter with that name while driving south on the Blue Ridge Parkway. This Virginia hike is in the George Washington National Forest. The second is actually a Blue Ridge Parkway trail, a strenuous 2.5 mile hike in North Carolina, at Blue Ridge Parkway Milepost 339.5.
Various publications describe Crabtree Falls as “the highest in Eastern America,” the “highest in Virginia,” and the “highest in the Virginia Blue Ridge.” Which of those claims to believe probably depends on a list of qualified terms and arguable assumptions. This path follows Crabtree Creek’s 1,800 feet descent to the Tye River. Along the way, five major waterfalls create a truly spectacular cascade.
The trail area includes in renovations as of 2002 including a seventy car parking area, new barrier-free rest rooms, and an extensively reworked approach that provides barrier-free access to the first overlook on the falls. The trail’s improvements are largely designed to keep hikers away from the cascades, which have claimed more than twenty lives.
Developed observation areas overlook the falls at four places along the trail, the first just above the parking lot on the new trail. There’s a wood deck overlook at 0.7 mile, and at 0.8 mile you can use a small vace to rejoin the trail above. An overlook at 1.4 miles looks up at the upper falls. The last overlook, at about 1.7 miles, surveys the Tye River Valley from above the upper falls. A return from that point makes a nice 3.4 mile hike.
